


Executor

by icandrawamoth



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Artistic License - Law, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inspired By Tumblr, Post-Distna, allusions to Tycho/Winter and Wedge/Iella, ambiguous Wes/Hobbie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 07:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17219882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/pseuds/icandrawamoth
Summary: As the last of his friends left alive after Distna, it's Wes's responsibility to ensure their last wishes are carried out.





	Executor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Justice_Turtle (Curuchamion)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/gifts).



> Inspired by a coversation ages ago on Tumblr about Wes being left the sole executor of the rest of the Fab Four's wills after Distna. Also submitted for badthingshappenbingo square "isolation."

Wes has sat by Hobbie's bedside in a medbay too many times over the years to not have realized that one day he was going to watch him die.

It was the watching that was the problem, though, because when it happened, Wes wasn't even there. Not consciously, anyway. And he never expected Hobbie to take the rest of the Rogues with him. All of his closest friends gone in one fell swoop.

The bacta has healed Wes's body, but the cracks in his heart can't be disappeared so easily. It's not even pain, not yet, just empty shock. Just the numbness of feeling suddenly so alone.

And the fact that he can't even rest in his grief, because with all the loss also comes responsibility. Wes is the last Rogue, and the fact is so heavy he can barely breathe. He thinks of Myn Donos – the last of Talons, the entire squadron gone now – and how much his losses changed him. It's so easy to understand.

There are condolence letters to write, a duty Wes won't leave to anyone else, because who knew the Rogues better than he did? And it will be a way to say goodbye to them, to put thoughts, words and memories, on a screen and purge them from his mind.

But then, the worst of it. He looks down at the datapad clenched in his hand, at a solemn message from Admiral Ackbar with three files appended:

_Last Will and Testament of Derek Klivian_  
_Last Will and Testament of Tycho Celchu  
_ _Last Will and Testament of Wedge Antilles_

This was never supposed to happen. He was never supposed to be looking at these three documents he hoped never to see like this, that he never imagined seeing all at once.

He had known, of course, that each of his friends had listened him as an executor. They all had wills for what little money and material they owned; it was foolish not to when you lived and died like they did. They had all listed each of the other three as alternates, in the chance that when the time came one of them wasn't available.

Wes knew Hobbie had listed him as his first choice, and he had done the same, as Tycho and Wedge had listed each other. Now...now the rest of them are gone, and it's just Wes left to see to their last wishes.

With numb fingers, he flicks through the documents. He's seen then before, briefly, to check them over when his name was signed to them, and he can remember most of what the short missives say.

Tycho wants his personal possessions delivered to Winter when she can be tracked down and his monetary assets divided between a favorite Alderaanian survivors charity and Rogue Squadron. Wes puts a mental pin in that last part. Who knows what will happen to the squadron now. Perhaps it will be decommissioned again, this time permanently. He imagines the ambush, the loss of all their pilots, is going to put a blight on its symbolic record the New Republic had been so fond of. If it does cease to exist, Wes decides, he'll send Tycho's money to Starfighter Command at large for them to distribute as they see fit. He thinks Tycho would approve of that.

Wedge is next, and he has made a few more requests. His money is earmarked for a Corellian veterans fund, and he's suggested that any material possessions that someone may want and are no longer useful to the cause be donated to a museum. He never could understand why someone might want to look at his stuff or learn about him personally, Wes recalls with fondness. Wedge Antilles was always too modest for his own good.

There's a recorded message for his sister, too, and Wes sets that aside without opening it. It's none of his business. He has no idea how to find Syal or Wynssa or whatever she's calling herself nowadays, but he'll make it his mission now. Wedge deserves that much from him.

Wedge had known the odds of anyone actually having a body to deal with if he died were slim, but he's made a note about it in case. He was just fine with with being interred in the Corellian Sanctuary, compressed into a diamond and set into the domed wall studded with other such gems in the shape of the stars seen from his homeworld. He requested, if it were possible, to be made part of the constellation of the Architect.

He hadn't mentioned it often, but that was what he wanted to be if he ever managed to leave the war. Wes had always thought if any of them had a chance at a decent civilian life, it was Wedge. He had skills applicable outside of killing, a good personality, a future. He had Iella – or he almost did. Wes thinks there was more to that than even he knew, if the level of her own grief is anything to go by.

And it turns out Wedge had a plan regarding his future he never told Wes about, which he finds tucked at the end of the will, a new section added since he'd first asked Wes to glance over it. It gives the numbers for a retirement fund, something Wedge had been putting small deposits into regularly in the hope that one day he could start that civilian life. Wes's lip wobbles as he reads the line saying Wedge wants those credits divided among his remaining executors, to be used for that same purpose.

He has to take a break after that, dashing gathering water from his eyes and taking deep breaths. He doesn't want to cry again. He's done so much of that already, and it's not going to bring any of them back.

Wes steels himself and opens Hobbie's will. Even after everything, it's so hard to accept he's gone. Hobbie, his best friend, the man he was closest to in the entire galaxy. Hobbie, who'd rarely left his side since they met in the infirmary on Yavin 4. Hobbie, who'd been in and out of his bed since shortly after that. It was never exactly an established thing – they didn't call it a relationship, and they certainly didn't call it love. Sure, Wes loved Hobbie as a close friend and brother-in-arms, if nothing else, and knows Hobbie loved him, too, in his own way, but it was never more solid than that. Now, whatever it was, Wes will never have it again.

There are tears on face again, but what's the point of wiping them away? They'll just come back. He should have learned this by now.

Hobbie's will is the shortest, the simplest. He wants Wes (or whichever executor or executors remain) to take everything he has and dispose of it the way they see fit. He always was a man of few words. In a way, it's more pressure than the stipulations the others have left behind. Like the rest, he doesn't have much, but Wes needs to know he's doing the right thing with what he's been entrusted with. He couldn't bear to think he's letting Hobbie down even now.

There's so much work to do, but he won't balk at it. Seeing to his friends last wishes is all he can do for them now. And when it's all finally finished, all those responsibilities seen to, he can mourn in peace.

And then he'll have to move on. The hollow feeling in his chest grows heavier as he considers it. His life goes on, and he has to figure out how to do that alone. No close friends, no Rogue Squadron. Wes doesn't know what he'll do, and it's chilling.

He wonders, idly, if Command might consider letting him transfer back to the Wraiths. Surely Intelligence would accept him into their number since he's worked with the squadron before. But then he considers the thought of a round of sympathetic faces, of having to watch those remaining friends process even a fraction of the grief he's going through, and he shudders.

He has time to think about, he tells himself. And perhaps his superiors might already have a plan. Perhaps he'll just go where they tell him. Does it matter, in the end? If he's shooting and flying and killing the bad guys, does it matter if he's happy?

Wes blinks back a fresh round of tears and rubs his hands over his face. He's too much in his own head. Usually Hobbie or one of the others would be here to pull him out, but now... A little choked sound escapes from his throat, and that's when he hears running feet in the hall.

He's left the door to the quarters Booster gave him cracked just to hear the occasional passer-by, to remind himself he's not totally alone, and he looks up now, wiping his eyes.

“Major!” Mirax bursts into the room half a second after her voice reaches him. She sounds excited, and for a split second, Wes's heart does this horrible twisting thing like hope before he clamps ruthlessly down on it.

There are more sounds in the corridor, and it takes him a moment to place them: droid treads. He turns his attention back to Mirax to ask what this is about, and then the droids, too, clear the door.

Two astromechs. One a silver and green R2. The other a familiar R5. Wes loses his breath as he turns pleading eyes on Mirax, begging her to explain.

“Rogue Squadron is alive!” she says, moving forward to take his hands, squeezing tightly. “Khe-Jeen Slee was also lost at Distna – I'm sorry – but Corran and Wedge and the rest – they're all fine. And they have a plan.”

“They're alive.” Wes's voice is steady, but inside he feels like he's breaking apart all over again, the relief utterly overwhelming. As his mind freezes over with the happy shock of it, he can only do one thing. An arm darts out, sweeps unashamedly across the desk, sending the datapads and their useless wills crashing to the floor. He grins up at Mirax through wet eyes. “Where are they? What's their plan?”


End file.
